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Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Gothic Spring: An Interview with Author Caroline Miller

On tour now with Nurture Your Book Tourz is Caroline Miller. She visits with us today about her latest book, Gothic Spring, an intriguing novel about the true powers of love. Welcome Caroline!

MK: WHAT LED YOU OR GAVE YOU THE IDEA TO
WRITE GOTHIC SPRING? WHAT KIND OF RESEARCH WAS INVOLVED?

CM: I’ll begin by answering the second
question first. I did very little research for Gothic Spring as I
lived its life, to a degree. In the 1960s, when I was in my early twenties, I
drifted to England and found a teaching position in the Midlands of England --
a dreary little industrial town in the middle of the Derbyshire moors.
The place was called Leek which I quickly amended to “bleak” Leek. Here was
the dark geography made famous by Thomas Hardy – Tess of the d’Urbervilles,
The Mayor of Casterbridge, Jude the Obscure
and the like. In that red brick factory town, soot fell from the chimneys
like a grey snow, clinging to the air and giving it an oily pungency. Needless
to say, the experience left its impression. From these memories, Gothic
Spring was born.

The theme of the story came from my
work in the woman’s liberation movement. Joining the efforts of other
women to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, I observed the many ways women
interacted with each other, not all of them good. I saw jealousies and
power struggles which impeded and then scuttled any hope of success. Victorine
Ellsworth, the central character of Gothic Spring struggles against the
same roiling emotions, but in a repressive Victorian society. Her guardian aunt
smothers her; her former teacher wishes to liberate her but the older woman’s
ego gets in the way and the Vicar’s wife is suspicious of this beautiful, young
girl. Gothic Spring isn’t an idea I invented but an experience
which was foisted upon me.

MK: CAN YOU BRIEFLY TELL US ABOUT THE
BOOK?

CM: Gothic Spring is a journey into a mind that is unraveling.
Victorine Ellsworth is a young woman poised at the edge of sexual awakening and
cursed with more talent and imagination than society will tolerate. The
conflict between her desire and the restrictions that rule her lead to dramatic
consequences.

MK: DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE CHARCTER IN
THE BOOK? WHO AND WHY?

CM: I imagine every author delights in
his or her characters, even the evil ones. Critics accused John Milton of
falling in love with Satan in his long poem Paradise Lost.
But I think of all my “children” as equals because they are equally
flawed. None do I favor above the other.

MK: WHAT IS THE MOST DISTURBING ELEMENT
ABOUT THE BOOK FOR YOU, AS THE AUTHOR?

CM: The most disturbing element about
the book is its theme. Love, whatever its good intentions, can be ugly
and destructive. Didn’t Othello murder Desdemona out of love? Or
Media murder her children out of love? Love is not a gooey emotion but a
powerful force to be reckoned with. To love wisely but not too well is
easier said than done.

MK: IS THERE A SCENE THAT REALLY STANDS
OUT TO YOU? WHY?

CM: The scene that moves me still is
toward the last when Victorine is on the verge of destroying the youth who
adores her. In this scene she faces her insanity with a desperate
desire to be forgiven:

I fell to my knees struck dumb by humility and the terror of a life without
him. Was it too late, I wondered? Too late to be forgiven?

“Jeremy, dearest,” I wept as I took his face into my hands. “You do love
me don’t you? Don’t you?”

MK: IS THERE SOMETHING, ANYTHING THAT
YOU CAN’T DO WITHOUT WHILE WRITING?

CM: As I work by inviting the unconscious,
believing that what lies before the surface of memory is more potent that what
we imagine we know, I require solitude.

MK: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE NON-WRITING
OREGON PASTIME?

CM: I adore my friends and I like
nothing better than to exchanged ideas with them over a good cup of coffee
while the rain pours outside. A good book on a rainy day is also a
pleasure.

MK: WHAT IS THE BEST PIECE OF ADVICE
GIVEN TO YOU BEFORE BECOMING PUBLISHED?

CM: The best piece of advice came to me
from my 96-year-old mother: Have faith in yourself.

MK: IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO
SHARE WITH YOUR READERS?

CM: I’d like them to know I have a new
novel coming out in October of this year, Trompe l’Oeil (to fool the
eye). The story takes place in France in the 1960s during the French Algerian
War. Rachel Farraday is about to graduate from Mills College when she
receives an unusual offer to travel to a small village in France to help a
stranger, Madame de Villiers, develop a history of her chateau. As
Rachel’s parents have recently died, she has no obligations and accepts the
offer. But when she arrives at the Chateau L’Ombre, she discovers her
employer and the chateau pose numerous mysteries, not the least of which is the
existence of underground tunnels that haven’t been explored in years.

I’d also like to invite everyone to
my blog CarolineMillerWriteAway which I write 5 days a week, (M-F) on
writing and literature as if reflects life.

The Author

Caroline Miller
has published numerous short stories in publications as diverse as
Children’s Digest, Grit and Tales of the Talisman. Her short story,
“Under the Bridge and Beneath the Moon,’ was dramatized for radio in
Oregon and Washington. Her novel, Heart Land was published in 2009 by
Schiel & Denver, and Gothic Spring was also published in 2009 by
Asylett press.

Caroline is also a silk painter whose pieces have been sold in local
galleries in the Portland area. Her art work has also been included
in a number of juried exhibits. She taught English at both the high
school and university levels, headed a Labor union for five years and
successfully ran for public office three times.

Caroline holds a B.A. and M.A.T. degree from Reed College and an M.A.
in Literature from Northern Arizona University where she graduated
with honors. Ms. Miller lived for two years in England and two years
in what is now called Zimbabwe.

Book Excerpt

I do not
expect anyone to understand the bizarre sequence of events that changed
my life from its bucolic existence into a living hell; nor do I look for
compassion. Suffice it to say, I grew up in the northern part of
England, an only child who’d been orphaned since I was ten and, prior to
the time of these mishaps which I am about to describe, I had been
living for five years under the protection of an indulgent aunt — a
plump woman in her mid-sixties, whose faded mouse-brown hair aged her
beyond her years.. Growing up, I kept to myself much of the
time. Being a bookish child, I fancied that I was brighter than my
classmates at the Leland School for Girls, that ivy encrusted structure
that looked more like a mausoleum than a center for learning. I imagined
that they resented me for my passions, Shakespeare and Milton, while
they contented themselves with chatter about bustles and garden parties
given by the Queen. Further, because I suffered from a severe form of
epilepsy and was subject to seizures, they thought me strange, or at
least, unreliable.

No matter, by the age of thirteen, my
seizures increased and the purgatives became more severe. No longer did I
suffer mere episodes of faintness that could be remedied with the
application of trinitrini. What followed were periods of complete
collapse that began with a tingling in the limbs, then a stiffening and
ended in bodily thrashings so severe that I had to be held down to
prevent me from doing myself an injury. Not a pretty picture I suppose,
though I never had any recollections of my suffering, being unconscious
at these times. Certainly these seizures and the treatments that
followed, pine baths and the application of leaches, were remedies alien
to a classroom. I was forced to withdraw from school, my education
assigned to the sometimes careless hands of a series of tutors, most of
them so unremarkable that I can recall neither their names or faces —
except for Mr. Huddleston, who was dismissed because he wrote me endless
poems. The other whom I remember with some fondness was Vicar Soames
who served not as my academic but as my Biblical teacher.

A cleric of advanced years, the Vicar’s
frock coat reeked of the camphor he rubbed into his joints, and his
asthma made him wheeze. Despite his impairments, he was faithful to me
and tottered to my fireside each Wednesday afternoon so that, once grown
used to him, I found him amusing. Toward me, he showed both patience
and endurance, being neither alarmed nor repulsed by the excesses of my
illness. In time, we two misfits grew together, each accommodating the
other the way the earth accommodates a seed until it flowers.

On the occasions when his infirmities
caused him to be absent, I missed him and was saddened when these lapses
increased. His failing health affected his work in the parish as well,
and in time the church council called for his retirement. Aunt Julia was
among them, though I suspect she had another motive as well. The
extended length of our visits, the Vicar’s and mine, became an annoyance
to her. “The man is forever underfoot,” she would often complain. Nor
did the gifts he brought me, flowers and sweet meats meant as rewards
for my studies, win him her approbation. At the very least, she accused
him of spoiling me. At the very worst, she may have spied him kissing my
hands, my cheeks.

Whenever the subject of retirement was
broached, however, the Vicar argued against it. “One does not retire
from God’s work, Miss Ellsworth,” he huffed during a chance street
encounter with my aunt. “I may not be a young man, but neither am I so
enfeebled that I should be put out to pasture like an old cart horse!”
His remarks did nothing to endear him to my relative who wielded
considerable influence where church politics were concerned. In the end,
her will prevailed. A railway ticket was purchased, lodgings arranged
for in Brighton and in a matter of days, the old man was no more than a
memory.

Wanted to thank you for your comments and let you know that my novelette, "Marie Eau-Claire" is current running and free at: http://TheColoredLens.com. It will suprise you and I hope give you a smile. It's my thanks for stopping in a commenting on Gothic Spring.